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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24734449">Lovebugs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/pseuds/trashsshi'>trashsshi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>EXO (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Attempt at Humor, Birds, Boys In Love, Bugs, Cottagecore, Crack Treated Seriously, Cute is an Aesthetic, Cutesy, Declarations Of Love, Fairytale-ish, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Is this a kissing book?, Language of Flowers, Love Confessions, M/M, Nini has a PhD in Adorable, Thumbelina References, a garden and its inhabitants</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:08:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,860</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24734449</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/pseuds/trashsshi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Once there was a garden sprite called Baekhyunnie. He was all fluff, like dandelion and peach fuzz. He was friends with Nini, who was all warm edges, like toffee. Nini had a huge soft spot for flowers. He considered only Baekhyunnie to be more beautiful than them, nobody else.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Byun Baekhyun/Kim Jongin | Kai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lovebugs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts"></a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>the flowers as love language is only a later plot development, but i hope you enjoy this nonetheless (/ω＼)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>By the time fairytales reach our ears, they are altered versions of the real events, like the party game where you say something and it travels around the room, morphing into something quite different by the end. That is what happened with Thumbelina, and if you’ve read or heard the story, you’d know that little Thumbelina finds a little king in the lap of a flower, and in the flower-field there is a little person at the center of every flower; he is the king of them all. They also have dragonfly wings to flutter around with. Well, the reality is quite different: there are tiny people who do like to sit in flowers, but their existence isn’t tied to the flowers alone, and they’re quite ordinary and can’t fly any more than we giants can. They are called garden sprites, and they can occasionally be found in giant country. If we still had gardens, we’d meet them more often.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once there was a garden sprite called Baekhyunnie. He was all fluff, like dandelion and peach fuzz. He was friends with Nini, who was all warm edges, like toffee. One day Baekhyunnie walked through the garden, searching for Nini. He soon found him, stretched out on a cool bit of moss with his honey arms folded under his head. There was a blade of grass lying on his face to shade his eyes from the sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nini,” said Baekhyunnie, and Nini scrambled to his feet as though Baekhyunnie had barked at him. Baekhyunnie smiled at him softly, and Nini smiled back, fingers fiddling nervously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Want to have breakfast?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini nodded, then called to the tailorbird perched on the gate, “Let’s go for breakfast!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tailorbird (whose name was Pol) took the blade of grass he had so helpfully cut for Nini and, since he had finished napping on it, Pol added it to his nest. Then Pol flew the two sprites to the window ledge. Each of them held on to one of his legs and sat on one of his feet, planting their butts on his back toe and putting their own feet on his front toes. Pol dropped them on the window ledge and snarfed some of the crumbs there. Baekhyunnie and Nini had the rest. Nini would hold a crumb with both his hands, then place it down to help Baekhyunnie when he noticed that Baekhyunnie got crumbs-of-crumbs on his fluffy cheeks. Often, what they found on the window ledge were boring old bread crumbs, but this time it was cake crumbs, which they loved. It was boozy plum cake, and the booziness made Nini sleepy again even though he’d just had a nap. On the other hand, the sugar made Baekhyunnie energetic and jittery. He hopped up and down on the ledge impatiently until a passing sparrow took notice and transported them back to the garden’s ground. Nini immediately wanted to have a nap, but he had trouble breaking a blade of grass. The ladybugs helped him cut a blade using their pincers. The ladybugs didn’t have names because they could identify each other by their pattern of spots. Nini couldn’t identify them that way, although he’d tried memorising their spot patterns, so he’d named them all. The ones who helped him this afternoon were Dotty, Spotty, Button, and Sir Pincer. A baby ladybug, Little Red, scuttled around watching the proceedings. She wished she could help, but she wasn’t allowed to chew on anything as tough as grass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally they were successful, and Nini had a siesta, shading his eyes with the blade of grass. Baekhyunnie chased Little Red round and round the garden until Sir Pincer said in his grown-up voice that Little Red would tire herself silly like that and that baby bugs needed plenty of rest. Then Baekhyunnie chased Sir Pincer around, who said with great dignity that he didn’t play silly games and frivolities, but soon his pincers were clicking most excitably and he was scuttling around with haste. Dotty and Spotty watched and tutted that someone of his stature was behaving like this, at his age, and Button said, “He can’t know how to act his age. He’s never been this age before.” Everyone accepted that bit of wisdom and left Baekhyunnie and Sir Pincer to it, although they were worried for Sir Pincer, on account of his age. “Mind your heart!” called Dotty, and Sir Pincer took that opportunity to say, “That’s enough exercise for today.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie wandered around the garden in search of other pastimes. He got the bright idea of trying to uproot a blade of grass all by himself. How proud Nini would be of him if he succeeded! It might encourage Nini to have naps more often, though. Well, Nini would just have to promise to play with him every time he wanted Baekhyunnie to pull up grass for him, that’s all. Baekhyunnie jumped up, caught hold of the tip of a grass-blade, and when his feet were on the ground again, he ran while pulling it over his shoulder. He didn’t succeed in wrenching it from the ground, although he fell on his face a couple of times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He abandoned his efforts. Tired, dirty, and grumpy, he sat there for a while and simmered. He had never been so disappointed since that one time he had parachuted with a dandelion to his favourite toadstool only to find a toad already sitting on it. He got up, dusted himself off, and went to the birdbath. At Baekhyunnie’s request, the birds there sprayed him with water until he was quite clean but quite drenched. He wandered around until he came across Nini still napping in the sun, and lay down beside him to dry off. When Nini woke a while later, it was to see Baekhyunnie fast asleep next to him, making little noises in his sleep, tiny yips and gentle snores. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>🌼</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One afternoon, Baekhyunnie and Nini went to have lunch together. They walked to the flowerbed and climbed the bellflowers, sliding down their petals into their centers and feasting on the nectar there. By the time they climbed down, they were sticky all over from the nectar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel icky,” complained Nini. With the nectar coating his golden skin, he looked like he was made of honey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanna go to the birdbath,” said Nini, but Baekhyunnie shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All that nectar would go to waste,” said Baekhyunnie. “I’ll clean you up for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know how to?” said Nini skeptically.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve seen the Predator clean her babies so I know how it’s done,” said Baekhyunnie. The Predator was what the birds called the cat who sat at the window sometimes and watched the goings-on in the garden. The cat had never done anything to warrant the title, as far as Baekhyunnie could see, because she had never crossed the glass. Sometimes, when Baekhyunnie and Nini took crumbs from the window ledge and she happened to be there, they watched her in return. Baekhyunnie had seen her clean her babies during one of these breakfasts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold still,” commanded Baekhyunnie, and proceeded to lick Nini’s face in great wet stripes. Nini screwed his eyes shut and giggled when Baekhyunnie licked his nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Baekhyunnie moved to his neck, Nini giggled even harder. “That tickles!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie stopped. “I can’t stomach any more nectar,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So they took their sticky selves home. Home was a gap in the roots of the old oak tree. Of course, they stopped by the bird bath before that. A bunch of birds were there, flapping in the bath, and Baekhyunnie and Nini stood exactly where they’d be splashed. The ladybugs were there too, because Nini had made a deal with the birds not to eat the ladybugs. In return the ladybugs showed the birds where to find the smaller insects the ladybugs themselves ate. The birds got plenty to eat excavating worms from the earth as well as the seeds and crumbs the giants threw to them, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini was good at making deals to maintain harmony and codependence in the garden. He considered his most successful deal to be the one he cut with the caterpillars. They were eating through the lilies in the most disgraceful manner, Nini couldn’t stand to see them chomping away at them as though the flowers didn’t matter. (Nini had a huge soft spot for flowers. He considered only Baekhyunnie to be more beautiful than them, nobody else.) But these very disgraceful caterpillars sometimes shut themselves up for a makeover and came out transformed into the most graceful butterflies. Nini decided that he had to be fair- butterflies were more beautiful than the lilies. He cut a deal with the caterpillars: that they could eat all the lilies they wanted as long as they returned as butterflies. He was pleased to report that the caterpillars were creatures of their word. He now had the utmost respect for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Nini and Baekhyunnie had been sufficiently splashed, they sat out to dry. “I got nectar over everything and Baekhyunnie licked my whole face, like the Predator,” said Nini to the ladybugs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dotty clicked excitedly. “That’s a kiss!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” said Nini, blushing. “No, it isn’t!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what do you call a kiss?” said Spotty impatiently. Spotty and Dotty decided to demonstrate what a kiss was. They clicked their pincers together. Nini watched, fascinated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not your whole faces,” said Nini when they were done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s cause we don’t have faces,” said Spotty. “We’re designed to be compact and functional while still being aesthetically beautiful.” Spotty was very proud of his pattern, and he was a very shiny red too. Spotty was also a ladybug supremacist, which was a whole other can of worms, pun unintended. He believed that ladybugs were nature’s best designs, but at least he didn’t think other creatures were beneath him- he’d have been run off the garden turf if he ever held such an opinion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next day, they visited Sir Loey. Sir Loey and Sir Pincer had both been knighted by the chess piece that some giant had dropped on the garden path. The chess piece was a King, and although he had lost his army and his queen and had a very sad life story to tell, he still retained his knighting powers. Sir Loey had been knighted because of his scholastic contributions to the garden community. Nini and Baekhyunnie were paying him a visit to help him, ‘scholar to scholar’, as Baekhyunnie put it, although nobody thought of Baekhyunnie as a scholar except Nini and Baekhyunnie himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sir Loey lived in a hollow in the oak tree, with a barn owl called Duke Owlington. The King had made him duke because he took in both Sir Loey and the King as housemates. Sir Loey and Duke Owlington both had very round eyes, while the King had no visible eyes but could still see. Duke Owlington’s complete name was Owlbert Owlington, but ever since the King began living with him in his hollow, everyone referred to him as the Duke, out of respect. Today, Sir Loey was snuggling one wing of Duke Owlington’s and the King was snuggling the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I got you… chry… chrysa…” Nini gave up and just held out the flower to Sir Loey. Nini had to use both his hands to hold it, for the flower had quite a long stalk and heavy head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chrysanthemums, Nini.” Sir Loey smiled, stepped out of the snuggle and walked over to Nini, taking the flower from him. “Oof.” He stumbled a little, managing to place it on the desk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Those.” It was too big of a word. Nini looked longingly at Duke Owlington’s free wing. Nini wanted to wrap the Duke’s wing around himself and smush his face in the Duke’s down feathers, they looked so tufty and soft. But Nini didn’t have the courage to ask the Duke for snuggles because the Duke was, well, a Duke. Nini didn’t want to be impertinent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, Nini, I’ve been wanting a specimen of this for a long time. How densely structured it is,” said Sir Loey, observing it and sketching it in a notepad that was as tall as he was. He moved his pencil with both his hands, and it looked so heavy but the lines that appeared on the paper were light. Baekhyunnie was full of admiration. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know what chrysanthemums mean, Nini, in the language of flowers?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, they mean… longevity, and… joy,” said Nini, his voice going higher with excitement as he remembered the right answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Correct! Who’s been teaching you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The harvest mice,” said Nini happily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sir Loey took the pencil to the sharpener in the corner. The King said mournfully, “My great-uncle put his head in a sharpener one day. Found out later he’d been in love with the rook, who died in battle. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on those two. Of course, there was also the awkward matter of my great-uncle being married to his Queen. Painful way to go. He could have picked some other way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t executions used to happen by sharpener, too?” said Sir Loey interestedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” sighed the King, “many a pawn who met that fate. Sharpeners shave wood, you know, they don’t cut clean through like a guillotine. Worse than a guillotine, in that respect. Painful way to go, painful way to go. Popular spectacle though. All the subjects showing up to watch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enough, you’ll give the child nightmares,” Duke Owlington hooted chidingly. The ‘child’ he was referring to was Nini, who looked stricken.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini was still glum on the way home- the King’s stories tended to have that effect on him- so Baekhyunnie distracted him with a leaf umbrella with a big fat dewdrop on it. Nini tried to walk carefully so that the big fat dewdrop stayed on the leaf, and Baekhyunnie yelled whenever it wobbled or slid some way down the leaf. This kept Nini occupied until they came home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they lay under the stars, waiting for sleep, Nini whispered, “The ladybugs showed me how to kiss.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’s that?” said Baekhyunnie, intrigued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini propped himself up on one elbow and said, “You click your pincers together. So, your teeth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tentatively, they bumped teeth. Nini giggled, and suddenly Baekhyunnie caught Nini’s lips with his own. Surprised, Nini hummed sweetly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie leaned back and grinned at Nini. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>That’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> how you kiss.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini’s heart thumped like a rattling acorn. Baekhyunnie was thinking about how soft Nini’s lips had been, cushioning his own. An unfamiliar longing gripped him, but he willed it away. He wanted to sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini stayed awake a while longer, watching the stars until he felt calm enough to sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🌼</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini climbed a tulip and, sure enough, he found a harvest mouse asleep in it. It gave little twitches of its whiskers in its sleep. Its name was Squeaks, and ‘it/its’ were its preferred pronouns. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” said Nini, and the next moment, it was bright-eyed and awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I got you this,” he said, offering a stalk of grain. Squeaks started nibbling on it immediately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In return…” Nini hesitated. “I want a flower that tells someone that I keep… thinking about them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’ll be a yellow pansy,” said Squeaks, chewing rapidly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini scampered alongside Squeaks, searching for the bed of pansies. When they found it, Squeaks nibbled the stalk of a pansy for him and Nini dragged the flower home. When he presented it to Baekhyunnie, the latter was nonplussed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For you,” said Nini shyly, thrusting it at Baekhyunnie and legging away before Baekhyunnie could respond. Baekhyunnie examined the pansy and wondered what he was supposed to do with it. He decided to take it to Sir Loey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I think you should keep this one,” said Sir Loey, smiling when he heard the story of how Baekhyunnie got the pansy. He gave Baekhyunnie an origami booklet, just the right size for Baekhyunnie to carry under his arm, titled ‘The Language of Flowers’. Baekhyunnie took the hint and searched the booklet. He saw ‘thinking of you’ under the pansy entry, and grinned, remembering their kiss of a few nights ago. Clacking teeth and clumsy lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Over the next few days, Baekhyunnie received several flowers from Nini. He was at the cottontails’ burrow to give celery sticks to the baby bunnies who had successfully been weaned, when Nini gave him an apple blossom, pink and white like Baekhyunnie’s skin. ‘I prefer you before all.’ The next day, Baekhyunnie was picking more celery for the bunnies when Nini came to the vegetable patch to give Baekhyunnie a daisy. ‘I love you truly.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie blushed, exalted. But he didn’t know what to do. Would Nini like him to tell him his feelings through flowers too? Did Nini want him to say what he felt with words? But every time, Nini fled after giving him the flower, avoiding him the rest of the day, and even though Baekhyunnie knew Nini was just shy, sometimes he felt indecisive, fearful. What if Nini wanted to flirt one-sidedly for a while longer, until he overcame his shyness? What if Nini was bringing him flowers randomly and they didn’t mean anything because Nini didn’t intend for them to be a way to communicate his feelings? What if Sir Loey’s guess at Nini’s intentions was wrong? What if Baekhyunnie was misreading him?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Baekhyunnie received a red carnation, ‘My heart aches for you’, he decided to settle the matter once and for all. He sought out Squeaks and asked it, “Did you know Nini has been giving me flowers?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I’m the one cutting them for him,” said Squeaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does Nini know what they mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Squeaks considered him for a moment with its bright black eyes. “Yeah,” it said, without elaboration. Well, it was a stupid question, Baekhyunnie conceded. He knew Nini had been learning the language of flowers from the harvest mice for a while now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What…” Baekhyunnie blushed. “What is he trying to tell me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not for me to tell you,” said Squeaks nonchalantly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my siesta.” It climbed into a purple tulip and pulled one of the petals over itself as a blanket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” said Baekhyunnie, and turned homewards. He decided he needed more time to think over the right course of action. He didn’t want to drive Nini away in his haste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He consulted Sir Pincer, who only clicked impatiently, “In my days, once we kissed it was a sealed deal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, but he was just showing me what he thought was a kiss, and I corrected him,” said Baekhyunnie, exasperated. “The ladybugs had shown him how they kiss and he was trying to replicate it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Excuses,” said Sir Pincer loftily. “You don’t try kisses on just anyone. You try kisses on someone you want to kiss. In my day, flowers presented regularly signified courtship.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I daresay it could be that,” admitted Baekhyunnie. “But I want to be sure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sir Loey has given you the almanac, I hear,” said Sir Pincer. “If you know how to read, and how to turn pages, then I don’t know what else you need to be sure of what he’s trying to say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s been picking flowers according to what the harvest mice tell him about them,” said Baekhyunnie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When I was studying and compiling the language of flowers, they were my respondents. They assisted me greatly in my research,” said Sir Pincer, all loftiness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie took that to mean that anything the harvest mice told Nini would correspond to the almanac; after all, it was Sir Pincer who had bound his research thesis as the Language of Flowers and graciously agreed to give it to Sir Loey for the latter’s scholarly endeavours. And Sir Loey had in turn given it to Baekhyunnie because he’d guessed love was in the air. Baekhyunnie was quite sure he had made a copy, or more than one, of Sir Pincer’s text beforehand, though. The King, when he wasn’t telling sob stories to anyone who’d listen, was a good scribe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, sir, you’ve been a tremendous help,” said Baekhyunnie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My pleasure, dear. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go see to Little Red’s education.” Little Red was learning clicking combinations from Sir Pincer. Clicking combinations were a code, shared by ladybugs alone, which were to be used during unforeseen circumstances, to call for help or relay secret information. “We’ve all got to look after ourselves if something untoward happens, even you little ones,” Sir Pincer was fond of saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie left Sir Pincer to it. He went back to his house under the raised roots of the oak tree. That night was chilly, so he didn’t sleep out under the stars, he slept in his walnut shell bed, covered by one of Duke Owlington’s down feathers. “I’ll give Nini my answer tomorrow, definitely,” he promised himself, “come rain or shine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next day, he set off for the flower beds, determined to pick a red tulip- ‘I declare my love’- and present it to Nini. But his plans were spoiled when it began raining on the way. Every drop was a heavy splatter that drenched him from head to toe, and Baekhyunnie yelped, scurrying for cover. He found a toadstool to shelter under, but Nini already sitting under it with his knees drawn up, waiting for the rain to stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie joined him, drawing up his knees as well. They were shoulder to shoulder, and as the rain began to slant with the wind, they had to huddle closer together until their cheeks were squished together. Baekhyunnie bopped their noses together, and Nini giggled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why have you been avoiding me, Nini?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every bit of Nini that was pressed to Baekhyunnie- his thigh, arm, shoulder, and cheek on one side- was burning. Baekhyunnie’s soft cheek was squished against his. He wished they could sit like this forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nini?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he couldn’t make eye contact with Baekhyunnie. Baekhyunnie made him feel so tingly and tickly. Nowadays his head got all muddled when Baekhyunnie was around. He’d keep running away just to feel normal and composed again. Luckily he knew the language of flowers, or he might never have been able to relay his feelings to Baekhyunnie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie could smell something else tinging the smell of the rain on fresh earth. As he breathed it in, he got an attack of the tingles too. “Must be love in the air,” said Baekhyunnie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nini, who was rosy all over, turned to him with wide, shocked eyes. “Wh-what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you, Nini,” said Baekhyun simply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Attacked by shyness, Nini ducked, smushing his face in Baekhyunnie's chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Baekhyunnie said, “Look at me. I want to kiss you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you too,” Nini said, muffled into Baekhyunnie’s chest, then he raised his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sure enough, bumping their lips together felt much better than bumping their teeth together. Nini hummed and Baekhyunnie sighed, both content. Baekhyunnie was warm and shivering. Nini was woozy but not in a sleepy way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they parted, the rain had stopped, and the garden was twinkling.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this was a lot of fun to write, so i hope you felt a lil bit of that while reading it ｡^‿^｡<br/>also, i have a <a href="https://twitter.com/trashsshi">twitter.</a>♡<br/></p></blockquote></div></div>
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